Tuesday, February 5

Yellow Trainers

I am not a trainer-guy. Trainer guys are boring geeks that should go away. People should not buy trainers wrapped in plastic or use the phrase "colour-way" ever. I wear the most basic of footwear, mainly Converse and Vans in simple styles and colours. The occasional Emerica or something maybe because I skate and need something that will stand up to my incredible abilities, but on the whole my feet aren't getting too nutty.

The exception to this is when a trainer is yellow. A yellow coloured trainer is a thing I like to buy. It started years ago, when a friend of a friend had a crazy pair of yellow Etnies that I liked the look of. They must've turned on some nerdy yellow radar in my brain because I was suddenly noticing yellow shoes everywhere. Who were these yellow shoed people? Where did they come from? They were happy. They made me happy. Could I be their friend? I wanted to be like them. I splashed out on a pair of yellow Converse. I never wore them.

However, the slip-on boom of the past few years started things off again. Slip-on Vans were everywhere, and available in almost every stupid colour and pattern you could imagine. I reckoned I'd grab a pair of yellow ones. That seemed like it'd be an obvious colour for slip-ons; all bright and summery. No chance. They could not be found anywhere. The more I looked, the more I got addicted to finding a pair. It became a mission. A few close calls on ebay (wrong size) and in the female section of a shoe shop (too pale and girly) almost pushed me over the edge, until finally, after over a year of searching, I found some Emerica yellow slip-ons in a skateshop down south.

Phew! Close enough, and dirt cheap too. I was so relieved. With the pressure of the chase gone, I found a pair of slip-on vans online soon afterwards. All was well and all was holy. They looked like this:

Then I realised, oh my goodness! Oh my God! I was a big trainer nerd! They may not be limited edition Dunks or Adidas but crikey, they're bad enough. Worse! I was a trainer nerd for stupid children's shoes. I was living in Balamory. I stopped buying yellow trainers immediately and rarely wore the ones I owned.

Now to the present day. After being free of the yellow fever for months, I've relapsed. Vans put out some limited-edition, collaborative, Anti-Hero, yellow, nerd-a-thon TNT's and I've bought them up like a chump. It wasn't easy either. These things came out ages ago in the states and buying them here is a nightmare. Through keen searching I found some at Kate's Skates (free next-day delivery, goddamn) and I am once again at peace:

3 comments:

Back when I didn't care, I took my charcoal vannies slippons, bleached them, and dyed them red. I didn't know how to dye, so I dabbed it with a paper towel soaked with dye. My red slippons were so sweet. But I've never a person who was so into yellow shoes.